Silhouette Special Superswitch wiring

[keviny]

Hey there, fellow Silhouette Special users,

I'm having an issue with my Silo Special: the stock switch has given up the fight, so filled with optimism, I bought a Schaller Superswitch E and I thought, I'll wire it in the "HSS4" constellation. I have roughly worked out where shall I wire the pickup wires on superswitch, but there came the Silent Circuit and I dropped the ball. Please help, where shall I wire the yellow, blue and violet wires on the Schaller Superswitch E?

Thanks in advance for the answers!

 

[fbecir]

Hello and welcome

@beej our electronic wizard will surely answer ... but he is Canadian thus he is still sleeping !

 

[DrKev]

Welcome to the forum!

We'll let beej sleep, I got this.

That's not the right switch to correctly use the silent circuit. The silent circuit needs to be switched off in the hum-cancelling pickup combinations (or it will add noise to the circuit) and that's done by connecting the yellow wire to ground for the appropriate switch positions. You really need a full 5-way superswitch to do that, one like this..

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[beej]

Thanks Kev, I feel well rested now

 

[keviny]

Hey hey, thanks for your warm welcome!

Can you explain me the role of the wires of the Silent Circuit? Just to help me understand how it works. Thanks in advance!

 

[DrKev]

Hey hey, thanks for your warm welcome!

Can you explain me the role of the wires of the Silent Circuit? Just to help me understand how it works. Thanks in advance!

Sure! The single coils pickups are grounded through the silent circuit, which injects noise out of phase to each pickup, acting as a humbucker or out of phase parallel coil would but without affecting the frequency response of the pickup as a second pickup coil would. There are two connections; one for normal, and one for RWRP. If ever you have two single coils that have the same polarity, e.g. bridge and neck single coils in a SSS guitar, they both connect to the same wire. (There is no industry standard for standard phase and RWRP, so which one you use for which pickup may vary by manufacturer. For Dimarzio and Music Man single coils, neck and bridge single coils connect to blue and middle to violet.)

Blue: connect to ground side of "standard" single coil, neck pickup here.
Violet: connect to ground side of RWRP single coil, middle here.
Yellow: silent circuit defeat switches off the circuit when this wire is connected to ground
Red: Battery +9V
Black: Circuit ground.

The trim pot on the top of the unit is for dialing in the amount of hum rejection. There are different frequencies present and they don't all get affected the same amount so it is a compromise. make sure to test with the pickup in playing position. There is no perfect silence possible, most people report up to 60-70% apparent reduction in noise when factory set. My apartment is too electrically quiet and I can't really set mine properly. So I just set it in the middle and walk away. I must find a way to set up an appropriate noise source!

 

[keviny]

Thank you very much for your time and the precious information, grand monsieur!